


Lilac Sky

by Capucine



Category: Black Widow (Comics), Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Children, Alternate Universe - High School, Bullying, Child Abuse, Deaf Character, Deaf Clint Barton, F/M, School
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-18
Updated: 2016-08-02
Packaged: 2018-05-27 10:08:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6280330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Capucine/pseuds/Capucine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint is a kid with problems. Fortunately, he finds another kid with problems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Creepy-crawlies were all over his goddamn skin.

Clint couldn’t imagine feeling more like his skin had a life of its own, like every movement towards him was a potential attack. He was jumpy as a nervous cat, ready to either haul off and strike whoever touched him or jump out of his goddamn skin.

He couldn’t hear. Not the slightest sound.

Not since the blows and the cracking sound of his hearing aids in his ears. And he didn’t dare say so, because hearing aids were ‘fucking expensive, do you think we’re made of money?’ Barney might say something for him; he also might not. Barney was a wild card.

He wasn’t going to get new ones even if they knew, even as the bruises ached on his face and the auditory void seemed to drill into his brain. He kept swallowing, even as his tongue seemed to stick his mouth—the teeth, the roof, everything. Like it was too big.

He couldn’t freeze up school. So, he kept his head down, trying so hard not to react to every moment, to the crush of students that felt like an unknown mixed bag of predators and prey.

He was twelve. He was in middle school, so he knew this assessment wasn’t entirely inaccurate.

The fun thing about this school? It was a combined middle and high school. Yeah, the two groups were sort of separate, but they shared halls. And here came a herd of Junior fuckasses, like a snow plow going through the hallway.

He only saw them moments before they plowed into him, knocking him aside and into the lockers. Clint imagined there was a clang—it certainly felt like it on his skull. It was a sort of gravy pain, as Clint might describe it—hurt first, then trickled down in a humiliated ache. The kind that combined with emotional pain but not fear.

He swallowed hard and tried to stand, and that was when he realized the fuckasses were still there. One, a blond kid with sort of spiky hair, was saying something to him, an utterly condescending look on his face.

And Clint had no idea what he was saying. But he did know a response.

He flipped him the bird. It was stupid, his heart was pulsing in his ears, and the fuckass’s face twisted angrily.

The blond grabbed Clint, sending him against the locker again, and Clint didn’t think his heart could beat much faster. So he snarled and kicked the elder boy in the knee, twisting free of his grip. That, apparently, brought the other fuckasses into play, as several hands grabbed him.

He could feel his throat vibrate as he screamed as a fist connected with a bruise from before, the kind that was mottled black and brown and green. He saw stars, and struggled wildly.

The blond fuckass had his hair in his fist, making his eyes smart as his hair threatened to pull from its roots and he was yanked up onto his toes. He could feel his hot breath as the fuckass shouted in his face, face a putrid red and an altogether terrifying, trollish mockery of a human face.

He couldn’t get free, and this knowledge was enough to make his chest seize up, the ability to breathe suddenly not such an easy ability.

Suddenly, the troll face was gone from his, and he hit the floor hard, elbow hitting hard enough to bounce and face smacking into the plastic. It was cold and slightly damp.

He scrambled back up to his hands and knees as his wits came back to him, backing up to the lockers quickly—he couldn’t hear behind himself, after all, and if he blocked off most of his ‘blind spot’, he would be so much safer.

His eyes darted around, trying to find why he wasn’t being hurt, when he saw a flash of red hair.

And a tiny body kicking another fuckass in the nuts, which she must have done to the previous one already or something, because he was collapsed on the ground.

That was about when a teacher broke it up, getting red and sweaty shouting, face contorted in a way that was pretty hilarious without sound.

Clint didn’t find it all hilarious, sort of curled protectively against himself and his hands held close to his body as he tried to breathe. He hoped they couldn’t hear him, his lungs really hurt.

A slim hand extended towards him, and it was the redheaded girl. She was pretty, lips very smoothly shaped and eyes flashing green. She also held a veneer of ice over her face; only her eyes looked concerned for Clint, soft but hidden by the fringes of her hair.

He took her hand. Barney would have said to bat it away, she was a _girl_ , but Clint wasn’t Barney. She looked tough and like hell he would discount what she did just cause she was a girl.

He had few others who would do so. He was still trying to figure out why the hell she would, though.

They trooped down to the principal’s office, Clint keeping his eyes on the redheaded girl’s back. She moved confidently, gracefully but with steel underneath. Her shoulders were squared, so he tried to make his squared too.

He sat sullenly in the office, the fuckasses there who’d been physically involved, and the redhead, petite and tiny compared to the Juniors, sat with her head held high like a lioness.

Or maybe a sphinx. That seemed to suit her.

He had his head hanging, staring at a picture of an apple tree across the room, a barefoot kid lounging beneath it. He wished he was that kid right then, because he was going to get in trouble and he wouldn’t even know what kind of trouble.

The fuckasses’ parents got there first. They all went through, parents leaving with red faces or calm expressions or with their son’s hand tight in theirs. One father even seemed to be laughing a little.

It was just him and the redhead, who was holding a stiff upper lip and a cold expression towards the wall. 

He wanted to talk to her. He couldn’t, though.

But when he was looking at her face, suddenly, the green met his blue and it seemed to soften. Her lips were moving, but he had no idea, being fairly bad at lip reading, and his heart started to patter frantically in his chest, making it even harder.

Her brow arched, a clear question, confusion, on her face.

Clint’s lips did a weird thing like a stutter but without making words or a sound. Her confusion got deeper, more dark at what must have been a stupid look on his face.

Suddenly, she was coming across the room, and her hand slowly reached to the side of his head. He wasn’t going to deny that he was slightly frightened, or at least very unsure of what she was doing. He could see the tendons and muscles in her arm moving from the corner of his eye, but she wasn’t touching him.

A look of understanding came over her face. Suddenly, her hand, her right, was held up, steady and clearly in his vision.

‘D-E-A-F’ she spelled out, slowly, clumsily, with a questioning look on her face.

Clint nodded, biting his lip.

She tilted her head, taking in his expression, and asked, ‘S-E-C-R-E-T’

Clint bit his lip harder, turning his face away. How could she possibly understand? No one would. No one was like him.

Finally, he gave a yes, using the handsign, which was, in essence, a nodding fist. He was going to be caught and his parents would hate him. They didn’t even know the hearing aids were broken, and they’d say it was his fault and everyone would believe them. No one ever believed Clint.

A tap brought him back to looking at her. She spelled, slowly, ‘W-O-N-T-T-E-L-L’ and she tapped her own chest. ‘S-E-C-R-E-T-S-T-O-O’

He felt strangely soothed by this assurance. He started to sign to ask how old she was, what her name was, but she held up a hand and spelled out, ‘A-B-C-1-2-3’

She only knew the finger spelling alphabet and numbers.

He gestured towards himself. ‘1-2’

‘1-0’ she signed back, and he could have burst out laughing. She was ten. He’d been rescued by a ten year old.

‘C-L-I-N-T’ he spelled.

She grimaced, but spelled, ‘N-A-T-A-S-H-A’

Clint grinned a little. She was slow at spelling, but she was trying to communicate with him, and that mattered a whole hell of a lot.

It was then, just as she started to smile back, that an imposing figure seemed to appear in Clint’s line of vision.

He had red hair too.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint deals with life after meeting Natasha and wonders about the redhead who protected him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slower chapter compared to the first; Nat doesn't feature a lot in this one.

Clint could see the momentary tightening of Natasha’s face, and the way she quickly turned to face the redhead man. 

The man had a stern expression, and yet a lack of one. His eyes had no feelings. It was like they were dead. Clint would think he was blind if it weren’t for the fact he was clearly looking straight at Natasha, and then his eyes flicked over to Clint. 

Clint didn’t think the deadness was how a blind person’s eyes would look anyway. They still had feelings.

He was speaking, not a lot, his lips not moving much. Natasha’s body was straight, at attention. She was small, given that she was ten. Clint though he might only be an inch or so taller, though, and wondered if she was bigger than he was at that age.

He was one scrawny kid, and she seemed to be weirdly…lithe? Toned? She wasn’t chunky, but she wasn’t a beanpole either…or curvy, since she was a kid. She just had a solidness to her posture.

He brought his finger to his mouth to chew at the nail, the feeling a distraction from the vacuum of sound. He wasn’t sure if he should be afraid of the man or not, even if the man seemed to set a chill in his skin. A familiar one.

Natasha kept giving short nods, short responses. The man gave a curt nod back, after a while, and then turned to leave.

Natasha looked at him, and very suddenly, while the man’s back was turned, cupped his cheek, an almost clumsy gesture, looking at him the surprisingly soft eyes again, her fingers tough against his soft cheek. And then she was leaving.

Clint watched, wordless and soundless, as she left, no indication of caring really coming from her now. He wished she could somehow stay with him—he liked her. 

Not in a weird way, but she was so much more willing to communicate, and that was a weird feeling. Barney would often flake on him, insisting he didn’t know how to sign or whatever excuse he made—Clint couldn’t exactly hear it.

He also had the good graces to claim Clint was making it up when he could hear again and talk to him.

For now, though, he stayed in his silent little world, picking at his thumbs and wishing to just get this over with.

His parents didn’t come for another hour, during which Clint had plenty of time to try to figure out how to look like he could hear. The little cues his parents gave for what they were saying. Or what they wanted him to do.

Mr. Barton was the one who showed up—his dad. The man didn’t stink of alcohol or lurch, simply walked in and turned to look at Clint with a sorely disappointed expression. Like he had nothing to do with Clint not being able to hear and therefore getting in trouble.

Well…that was probably Clint’s fault. He shouldn’t have gotten into a fight, hearing or not.

So he simply slunk along behind his father, let him do the talking, nod when it seemed appropriate.

Shrug when it seemed like the principal, a balding man, asked him questions.

Soon enough, they were out. His dad seized his shoulder, too tight to be anything good, and pulled him into the seat of his old sedan. He seemed to be ranting at him, kept giving him that ‘Look at me when I’m talking to you!’ look.

So Clint looked. Looked hard.

And that was too much eye contact, because he got the familiar smack for being a ‘smartass.’ At least, that was probably the pronouncement.

He alternated between looking sorrowfully at the dashboard and nodding penitently at his father. If it were any other circumstance, he might argue back. He might act angry. But right now, his core was frozen solid and the vacuum in his ears seemed to suck away his courage.

They were home, he realized, half relief and half dread. If he could slip away, he could find some peace. If he couldn’t, it would be worse.

He dashed as soon as he could open the car door, heading for the woodpile out back—a necessary step to getting up on the roof.

He chanced a glance back, and his father’s face wasn’t stretched with a shout, he was only lumbering grumpily towards the house. So, Clint did what Clints did best—climbed onto the roof through the backyard’s woodpile.

He hid for what must have been hours, toes pressed on the sticky roofing and he was glad it wasn’t summer. He’d kicked off his shoes, and if it were summer, it wouldn’t be just his feet baking for sure. The heat would be far too much, as a slight reddened spot on his hand attested to. He was careful to gauge the temperature now.

For now, he enjoyed a soft breeze, it moving his short hair. It was very faint movement, but he could feel it.

And he wondered about the redhead girl. Where she was, what she was doing, if she feared her father too. He saw in a lot of movies that people didn’t fear their parents. He thought that might be a fiction thing, like falling in love or kids who looked nothing like their parents despite not being adopted. Just a measure used for the story.

And he looped his hands over his knees, staring into the slowly appearing stars.

It was dark by the time he climbed down, and headed for his window. The front and back door were always locked by now, and the window was easy enough to get open.

He nudged at it, and it didn’t budge. Perplexed, Clint tried getting his fingernails under the edge of the window, but all it did was hurt his fingers. He pressed his hands against the glass, getting it to suction some, and tried to push it up that way. No luck.

His sharp eyes quickly deduced the problem: for the first time in years, perhaps before Clint could remember, the window was locked. The brass turning lock was turned the wrong way.

And he didn’t dare bang on it. He tried tapping a few times, seeing what looked like a lump of Barney on the bottom bunk, but it didn’t move at all.

He really didn’t want to wake his parents. He really refused to do that. He was scared of what would happen to him if he did.

So, he did the next natural thing: he started wandering in the night.

The tears at being locked out were banished, and instead, he examined the nighttime landscape, dark and sometimes silvery in the light from the moon. It looked like everything was sleeping, held in time. Clicked off.

And he walked along the road, dragging a stick alongside him and feeling the vibrations through his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ta da? I guess I liked it. Kinda interlude ish chapter before shit goes down. :)
> 
> I hope it's acceptable. :P


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint returns from the outdoors, but things still aren't any better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ta da?

The problem with simply disappearing in the night was that you had to make it back in time for school. By now, Clint mostly knew how to do that.

He’d found an old dog house, fluffed it full of leaves, and slept there curled like a baby bird in a nest. He honestly liked doing that, sometimes, even though it was much colder. At least the cold was impersonal and fairly predictable. His dad coming and yanking him out of bed for supposed slights or to reinforce his rant from earlier, however, was unpredictable.

So he had his stick, and he liked to pretend he was traversing a wilderness with no one in it. 

His skin was sticky cold with morning dew and night chill, and he rubbed his hand across sleep-bleary eyes. His mouth seemed to stick closed, but that was okay. He could open it to eat, and he had nothing to say.

He was still wearing yesterday’s clothes, so he wouldn’t really need to go inside the house. Also, he knew the extremely important skill of peeing in the woods, so he did that. You covered it up with dirt or leaves when you were done. Lots of people used toilet paper, he guessed, but he didn’t have any, so he had to figure out which leaves were safe to use.

That was a trial and error he was glad was over.

His first time hiding in the woods one night, he’d cried until he threw up. Now, he didn’t even cry. 

Clint hit a stone out of his way and congratulated himself on his progress. He was getting better at this. What ‘this’ precisely was, he wasn’t sure, but he was better.

The sun was still in gray pink, and he could feel the slight difference in temperature. It felt warmer just looking at the light, and he let out a sigh, feeling the air whisk through his throat and past his teeth. He wished it could be early morning forever, somehow, when no one else was around but it wasn’t pitch black. 

The school bus was yellow, rusted, and with a red stop sign on the side that was missing the P. It told all the cars to STO whenever the bus had to drop off kids. It was probably why there were as many kids struck, Clint guessed, in their area.

Or maybe people just didn’t generally care about kids. Clint wouldn’t be very surprised, as that seemed to be the case with at least 90% of adults.

The kind who’d either pat you on the head with pitying eyes, or the ones who wouldn’t look at you at all, like they could erase you from the classroom, or the ones who were outright mean. Kinda like Clint’s dad.

Clint tapped at a large brick in the dirt, feeling it through his arm. He kind of liked hitting things. Maybe it was silly, but it felt nice and somehow good.

The school bus lady didn’t so much as look at him as he boarded, the usual dark undereyes and the cigarette leaking smoke held in her hands as she waited to shut the door. It almost made his eyes water when he had to walk through the cloud.

He could usually tell, from his peripheral vision, when someone was about to bump or outright slam into him on the jostling bus, so he made his way back to a seat and sat stolidly staring out the window with no incidents.

Besides, he wasn’t as fun a target as some other kids since he was okay with things like biting people and getting the shit beaten out of him if it meant getting some solid hits in.

He only really realized Barney was the kid next to him when he wrenched him towards him, face furious. He was shouting, Clint realized, and now much of the bus was staring. His red, red face as he shouted at Clint was strangely dissonant with the complete silence filling Clint’s head.

He was pretty used to that dissonance now, though.

He shoved Barney away, which only earned him being seized tighter, the grip bruising. His brother was screaming in his face, he could feel the hot breath and heat of his face. 

Of course, he could also see the eyes full of burning rage, so it wasn’t exactly rocket science.

Clint snarled and kicked his own brother in the balls, then pushed past him and ran for all he was worth. The bus was moving, but the bus driver stopped with a jerk, probably intending to stop him or something, but he got the doors open and ran for his goddamn life.

He didn’t need to look back to know there was a good chance Barney would be after him.

They’d made it fairly far in that time on the bus, he realized: into the better area of town. County. Whatever. What with the high speed limits, and the bus driver’s lack of fucks given, they covered ground fast when there wasn’t snow.

His lungs burned. Sounds were coming out of his throat, maybe keens. It felt like he was crying, face stinging and hot. He tripped over an angel statue and plunged into nicely kept bushes, scratched like he’d climbed in a bag of angry cats. The lines felt like hot pain for only a couple seconds, and then he was bruised and battered and halfway through falling through a bush.

He cried.

He had no doubt what Barney was screaming at him about.

Their parents had noticed he was gone, and he was in trouble. Barney probably got in trouble too for it, because Clint’s dad never had a strong sense of cause and effect or whatever. Punishment and doing something wrong rarely had much to do with each other.

A branch was poking him hard in the stomach, and his arm was trapped folded across his chest.

He didn’t want to get the shit beat out of him again. Not today. Not knowing that he’d have to face all day and then come home to that.

Why did they have to notice? It would be the first—well, second, fucking time they ever had. For real. Not just a squint at him at breakfast like ‘huh, it looks like you might’ve spent the night outside’.

Something was really bad, and Clint was in trouble.

And this bush really didn’t want to let him go.

He sniffled hard, trying to clear his nose as he struggled with it. He was off his feet, which was not so helpful, and there were a lot of leaves in his face. They tasted awful, he concluded, as he spat out the one that made it in his mouth.

It was about then that a hand invaded the bush and he started struggling in earnest, getting scratched up pretty bad but hoping to god it wasn’t Barney or even his dad--

But the small hand laid on his face firmly. It was telling him to be still, and then, there was a face in the bush, looking at him with a raised brow.

‘W-H-Y-I-N-B-U-S-H’ Her other hand moved, and he could have collapsed in relief. 

It was Natasha.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have never in my life ridden a school bus, so I apologize for any mistakes.

**Author's Note:**

> Ta da! Hope you liked it. Based the feelings off of a recent assault from teen bro. Asshole.


End file.
